Category: Hardware Control

I was (and hope to again) working on a PID loop for the dragon's main light. The idea is simple- vary the heat lamp using a servo and rheostat. Some of you have expressed interest. Here are the photos of the servo setup. The code however is so bad I don't even know where to … Continue reading PID Hardware Photos

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Wikipedia says that a proportional–integral–derivative controller (PID controller) is a generic control loop feedback mechanism (controller) widely used in industrial control systems – a PID is the most commonly used feedback controller. A PID controller calculates an "error" value as the difference between a measured process variable and a desired setpoint. The controller attempts to minimize … Continue reading PID? What is it?

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My LCC project is growing. Too much I/O is needed! I'm exploring the I²C bus system. It seems simple enough. Direct I/O is nice but is wasteful- I've used all the I/O already on the LCC project but I still need more! Wikipedia has a great write up all about it. Now I have to apply … Continue reading Out of I/O! What to do???

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For my LCC project I decided to use a 2N4401 NPN transistor to control status LEDs and AC Switches. I did this so that the power draw from the Arduino chip would be as low as possible. Below is a diagram of how this works. I used a 2N4401 NPN transistor that "turns on" when … Continue reading Using a Transistor to Control an LED or anything

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On my last project- which still isn't done yet- the buttons for changing the temp display are very unresponsive. The reason of course is because the Arduino has to loop through all the main code before getting around to checking the button status. I found the cure! Interrupts! EngBlaze has a great write up on … Continue reading Slow Button/Switch Reaction

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Description This is the Tri-Temp project. It comes in two flavors- Standard and Ethernet. The Standard version outputs all readings on an LCD. The Ethernet adds output to HTML via a web browser. I did not design this to use an Ethernet shield- only the Arduino Ethernet- it's more compact.So what's this all about? Reading … Continue reading Tri-Temp Project Intro

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This was my first sensor. It's a digital temperature and humidity sensor. It uses three pins, two for power and one for data. It worked perfectly...except....the libraries provided by Virtuabotix ($9.99 via Amazon.com) didn't work with the Arduino IDE v1.0. So if fixed it! You can download the library from this post. Remember to place … Continue reading DHT11 Digital Temperature & Humidity Sensor

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This example shows the code to control a servo on digital pin 2 via a potentiometer on analog pin 0. You can change the pins around via the variables in the beginning of the sketch. [php] #include <softwareservo.h> SoftwareServo myservo; // create servo object to control a servo int potpin = 0; // analog pin … Continue reading Code to Control Servo via Potentiometer